Explosive ordnance disposal (EOD)
robots have saved countless lives in
Iraq. In 25,000 EOD missions, there
have been 30 fatalities. The death
count would have been higher if it
weren't for the robots, according to
Army Col. K. Reinhard, who commands
the Army, Navy and Air Force
explosives disposal teams in Iraq.

But "improvements can be made
and should be made," he said earlier
this spring at the National Defense
Industry Association (NDIA) Ground
Robotics Exposition in San Antonio,
adding that robots should be able to
see, touch and even hear when they
are downrange acting as surrogates for
technicians.

A small group of engineers from the
Biomedicine Business Area is already
heading in that direction with the
creation of the Dexterous Robotics Platform.
The system, affectionately known
as Sally, is a fabricated human torso
"armed" with the first two prototypes
from the Revolutionizing Prosthetics
Program, an APL-led effort to create a
prosthetic arm that looks, feels and operates
like a human limb.

Unique Capabilities
To operate Sally's arms, controllers
slide their arms in exoskeletal sleeves
and insert their hands into gloves with sensors on the fingertips. The operator
can control the robot's movements by
simply moving his own limbs.

Sally, a fabricated human torso equipped
with the first two prototypes from the
Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program,
was the "belle of the ball" at the NDIA
conference this spring.

The robot is mounted on a twowheeled
platform that can be steered
by a video-game type controller, a
joystick, or a foot-controlled pressure
sensor worn in the operator's shoes.
It is topped off with a tracking and
visualization system — two networked
cameras spaced at the same separation
and gaze angle as human eyes
— that streams images to two eyepiece
screens mounted in a visor-like cap. An
operator not only sees what Sally sees,
but when he moves his head, Sally's
follows.

Sally was the "belle of the ball"
at the NDIA conference, says M.
Kozlowski, a National Security Technology Department engineer
working on the effort. "She is unlike
any of the traditional EOD platforms.
Most fielded EOD robots are racked
vehicles with very low dexterity and
a claw that can move in three, maybe
five ways. Sally has stereo vision. The
operator can see what she sees in
3-D. She has motion-tracking features
that allow the neck to pan with
the operator's movement. And her
limbs can fully mimic the operator's
motion."

EOD personnel should be able to
learn the system quickly, Kozlowski
adds, "since we already innately know
how to control our native limbs. The
system will serve as a significant milestone
in anthropomorphic mobile
robotics and as a test bed for operator
training and development."

APL Leads the Way
The Navy, the lead service in developing
EOD robots, has asked APL
to create a common system architecture
for the next generation. "This is
significant," says Kozlowski, who is
leading the effort. "It enables us to
position the Lab as a systems integrator
to develop the next generation
of mechanical bomb hunters, which
have value beyond the battlefield."

APL already has the expertise to
support this role, in advanced robotics
research, human system integration
capabilities, virtual integration environments
and platform autonomy.
"

Much of Sally has been developed
under IRAD (Independent
Research and Development) funding
specific to Biomedicine," Kozlowski
says. "But as the technology
advances, we will begin using it as
a test bed for the control architecture
and other advanced robotics
tasks, and it will eventually be a
cross-enterprise Lab resource."